Search This Blog

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE: The Japanese Government Demanded Revisions of the 2012 WHO Report on Fukushima Radiation Exposure

The December 7, 2014 issue of the Asahi Shimbun GLOBE, a for-fee division of the Asahi Shimbun website, featured a series of articles on World Health Organization (WHO). It included an article whose title translates into "Revision Demanded of the Fukushima Radiation Exposure Report."
A screenshot of the article:

(Not to be copied without permission from Asahi Shimbun).

Below is an unofficial English translation of the article, with the contextually clarified title, posted with permission from the Asahi Shimbun. This post will be no longer available after April 29, 2016 (Japan time).*

＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊

The Japanese
Government Demanded Revisions of the 2012 WHO Report on Fukushima Radiation
Exposure

Written by Yuri Oiwa

A high level Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour (MHWL)
official heard the cell phone ring. It was a Saturday morning in November 2011.
“We have a problem.” It was from a younger colleague who was looking right at a
draft copy of the dose estimation report due to the nuclear accident that WHO
had been working on.

It showed thyroid exposure doses of 300 to 1000 mSv for
infants from Namie Town, Fukushima Prefecture, and 10 to 100 mSv for infants
even in Tokyo and Osaka. According to UNSCEAR’s report on Chernobyl, thyroid
cancer was found in approximately 6,000 people, and thyroid exposure dose for
evacuees was several hundred mSv. Some studies report thyroid cancer increased
with exposure dose above 50 mSv.

“WHO’s estimate is substantially higher than the reality.”
The Japanese government worked at having WHO revise the estimates by offering
new data such as the food monitoring results.

In the WHO dose estimation report released in May 2012,
thyroid exposure doses for infants was lowered to 100 to 200 mSv for Namie Town
and 1 to 10 mSv for Tokyo and Osaka. As it was felt that this was still
dissociated from the reality, the Japanese government requested revisions until
moments before the release of the report, with then MHLW Vice Minister Shinji
Asonuma conveying disappointment to Margaret Chan.

In February 2013, WHO released a health risk prediction
based on these estimates, “In majority of Fukushima residents, a possibility
for an obvious increase in cancer is low. Thyroid cancer risk might be
increased in some infants.” Lifetime risk for thyroid cancer would be about 1.7
times higher at maximum.

There are 3 full-time employees at WHO in charge of
radiation exposure issues. The WHO Fukushima reports were essentially written
by an international group of radiation specialists at the request of WHO.

The UNSCEAR report released in April 2014 estimated thyroid
exposure dose of 47 to 83 mSv, about half of the WHO estimates, for infants who
were in the 20-30 km zone from Fukushima Daiichi NPP. Mikhail Balonov, a
professor at the Institute of Radiation Hygiene in Russia and involved with
both reports, explained, “UNSCEAR report created after the WHO reports is more
realistic, as it reflects evacuation movements of the residents.” As for the
criticism that the WHO reports are overestimation, the WHO manager in charge of
the reports, Emilie van Deventer, said, “Considering uncertainties of
estimation, it is not much different from the UNSCEAR report. The mission of
WHO is to protect people’s health. Underestimation of risks must be avoided at
any cost.”

＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊

*Asahi Shimbun charged an annual fee of 12,000 yen plus tax for the secondary use (as in my own translation) of the article in the web. With an 8% sales tax of 960 yen and a domestic bank transfer fee of 324 yen, the total came to 13,284 yen (or $111.75 at today's exchange rate). According to the rules set by the Asahi Shimbun, excerpting did not require permission, but it necessitated a longer article to insert only parts of the translation. In order to avoid selection bias, a decision was made to personally pay the fee for one year so the information can be shared in its entirety, free of any personal biases. Copying the translation for reposting is permitted only if the entire translation is copied so as not to create any misunderstanding. This doesnot include the screenshot of the original article shown above, which requires permission from Asahi Shimbun.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fukushima Thyroid Examination Fact Sheet:
September 2017✴Copying or re-posting part or whole of this post is not permitted. Please link to this post instead.

Note: Corrections were made in the following paragraphs in pink color on October 17, 2017.Second paragraph in section "Screening protocol"First paragraph in section "Thyroid cancer cases"First paragraph in section "Transparency and integrity of data"Second paragraph in subsection "1. A limited time interval after the accident" in section "Official stance on radiation effects"Fourth paragraph in subsection "2. Very low doses" in section "Official stance on radiation effects"

Note: A shorter version of this fact sheet has been e-published on the website of Kagaku by the Iwanami Publishers. It can be downloaded from this link. Citation in AMA style is as follows: Hiranuma Y. Fukushima thyroid examination fact sheet: September 2017. Kagaku. 2017;87(9):e0001-e0011.

The Nineteenth Prefectural Oversight Committee for Fukushima Health Management Survey convened in Fukushima City, Fukushima Prefecture, on May 18, 2015, releasing the latest results of thyroid examination, consisting of Initial Screening or the first round screening (originally scheduled to be conducted from October 2011 to March 2014, but actually still ongoing) and Full-Scale Screening or the second round screening (beginning April 2014). It has been 3 months since the last committee meeting on February 12, 2015, and the latest results include 3 more months worth of data confirmed as of March 31, 2015.

As of March 31, 2015, there are 16 more (12 from the first round and 4 from the second round) confirmed cancer cases, all papillary thyroid cancer, and 9 more (2 from the first round and 7 from the second round) newly suspicious cases. The number of confirmed cancer cases now totals 103 (98 from the first round and 5…

The Interim Report released in March 2016 by the Oversight Committee for Fukushima Health Management Survey called for the need to establish the rules of management and provision of the data so it can be widely utilized by domestic and international experts. Accordingly, the Subcommittee to Review Provision of Data for the Purpose of Academic Research met in Fukushima City, Fukushima, for the first time on May 31, 2016. Subcommittee members were selected by the Fukushima prefectural government in order to address the role of the subcommittee in establishing technical rules in provision of data and include specialists in epidemiology, information technology, law, and legal sociology. Also included are members of the Oversight Committee for Fukushima Health Management Survey, Shoichiro Tsugane and Hokuto Hoshi, and the Health Survey Support Department Head and the Department of Epidemiology Chair at Fukushima Medical University, Tetsuya Ohira, representing the Fukushima Health Managemen…